Should the U.S. “Reoccupy” Iraq and Invade Syria?

In
light of the recent terror attack in Paris by a group of
predominantly French/E.U. Muslim citizens, President Obama has faced
an increasing chorus of voices calling on him to redeploy troops to
the deserts of Iraq to directly combat ISIS, and even intervene
militarily in the bloody Syrian Civil War. Republican presidential
candidate Jeb Bush recently called on the American military to “take
out ISIS with overwhelming military force” and Senator Lindsay
Graham has called for deploying 20,000 troops to the Middle East to
fight ISIS.

Such
warlike rhetoric by politicians fits a well-established pattern.
Whenever we see a gruesome beheading of an American journalist in
Syria or a terror act in a place like Paris, it elicits a visceral
reaction that is easily politicized. Frequently, the knee-jerk
response to such outrages is to put “boots on the ground” and
crush the terrorists with US troops. Such calls for action (instead
of “leading from behind” as Obama has been accused of doing by
his critics) resonate with some voters who demand action.

But
don’t forget that there are soldiers in those “boots” that many
politicians are rashly suggesting we deploy to the deserts of Iraq
and Syria. Almost 4,500 pairs of those boots came home empty to
grieving families in the 2003 to 2011 Iraqi quagmire, which we came
perilously close to losing. Recall if you will the dark days of 2004
to 2008, when thousands of Americans were dying and being horribly
maimed in hellholes that have become synonymous with bloody
insurgencies, like Fallujah, Ramadi, Baquba and the Triangle of
Death. At that time, Sunni insurgents were regularly posting online
videos of snipers, like the legendary Juba, picking off U.S. troops,
of American soldiers being killed in daily IED attacks, and of
fanatical fighters engaging in fierce urban combat in booby-trapped
alleys that mitigated America’s overly touted technological
advantages.

As
‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ sent waves of VBIEDs (Vehicle Born Improvised
Explosive Devices, i.e. car-driven suicide bombers) plunging into
U.S. Army checkpoints, convoys, and Command Outposts, tens of
thousands of Americans died, lost limbs or suffered Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder.

Polls
at the time showed the vast majority of Americans were against the
war that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had arrogantly (and
mistakenly) promised would be over in a matter of months when we
invaded back in 2003. A
2008 Gallup poll
found that 63 percent of those who were polled felt that sending
troops to Iraq was a mistake. A
CBS
poll found that 75 percent of Americans did not feel the war in
Iraq was worth the cost.

The
seemingly senseless quagmire in the desert, which cost three trillion
dollars, even began to grate on conservative Republicans, who began
to call for “nation building at home instead of in the deserts of
Iraq” after the 2008 recession began and the national debt began
growing.

By
2007 the ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ insurgents controlled most of the
Sunni heartland and Shiite extremists led by Moqtada al Sadr
controlled the Shiite south. Many feared that we would have a reprise
of the famous picture of the American helicopter evacuating the last
Americans from the embassy in Saigon before it fell to the Viet Cong,
except with a U.S. Blackhawk evacuating the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

In
the end, Iraq was saved by an urgent troop surge of 30,000
reinforcements in 2007, which united with the so-called Anbar
Awakening of 103,000 Sunni fighters who had become disgruntled with
‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ (also a Sunni group). This combination
temporarily put down the insurgency and allowed the war-weary
president, George W. Bush, to sign the face saving December 2008 SOFA
(Status of Forces Agreement) with Shiite Prime Minister Maliki.

This
treaty called for our war-battered troops to withdraw from Iraq by
December 2011. It had been a close call and suppressing the massive
Sunni insurgency had required calling up tens of thousands of
National Guard “weekend warriors” to fight on the frontlines in
Iraq and so-called “Stop Loss” extended combat tours for our
already exhausted troops. To put it mildly, sending two and half
million men and women into combat for longer than usual tours of duty
severely strained our military, and we have had military cutbacks
since then.

Most
importantly, had the 103,000 disgruntled Sunnis of Anbar not
abandoned the Sunni insurgency, which was led by ‘Al Qaeda in
Iraq,’ and come over to our side to work with the post-surge U.S.
force of 168,000 troops, the U.S. would have probably lost Iraq. In
other words, it took a combined force of over 270,000 Sunni Anbar
fighters and U.S. troops to defeat ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ in
just central and western Iraq in
2007.

Fast
forward to 2012. The U.S. troops departed in fulfillment of Bush’s
2008 SOFA treaty, which Obama “owned” in order to get the
decisive anti-war vote in the 2008 election. History shows Shiite
Prime Minister Maliki then turned on our former allies, the Sunni
Anbar Awakening militias, and drove them back into the arms of Sunni
‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ (which renamed itself the Islamic State in
Iraq or ISI). Led by the fanatical Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, these Sunni
fighters then swarmed into neighboring Syria in that year and spread
their power into that country as it descended into a hellacious civil
war that (so far) has cost 250,000 people their lives.

Thus
was born the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria or ISIS which has bulldozed the border between Syria and Iraq
and become the primary expression of Sunni grievance in this vast
region. Today it is firmly entrenched in an area larger than Britain
and is the most effective fighting force in Iraq, as best
demonstrated by its conquest last summer of Iraq’s second largest
city, Mosul. ISIS has deep pools of support among the Sunnis in Iraq
and controls the largest amount of territory in Syria, where it also
reflects deep-seated Sunni grievances. One cannot strategically
“defeat” ISIS without addressing its underlying basis for
widespread support (i.e. the fact that it represents the interest of
many Sunnis).

ISIS
is also an apocalyptic group that firmly believes in verses in the
Koran that call for a cataclysmic battle against an infidel army to
the end times. Its leaders dream of one thing in particular, a return
of American “infidel” soldiers to the region to fulfill this
end-of-times prophecy. They believe a U.S. invasion would galvanize
and unite their forces, bring even more Sunnis into their ranks, and
allow them to kill thousands of Americans as they did in the
much-relished days of 2004 to 2007. Jurgen
Todenhofer, a German
journalist who visited ISIS’s realm reported for the CNN
documentary Blindsided.
How ISIS Shook the Worldthat
“They want to provoke the Americans into putting boots on the
ground. That is their dream.”

ISIS desperately wants to
confront the American “supporters of the cross” in an apocalyptic
clash of civilizations that will define them as the defenders of
Sunni Islam in fulfillment of their fanatical interpretation of
Koranic prophesies. Al Baghadi/Caliph Ibrahim warned
Obama: “You should know,
you defender of the cross, that getting others to fight on your
behalf will not do for you in Syria as it will not do for you in
Iraq. And soon enough, you will be in direct confrontation — forced
to do so, God willing. And the sons of Islam have prepared themselves
for this day. So wait, and we will be waiting, too.” After
beheading an American in the town of Dabiq, an ISIS terrorist
proclaimed
on video "Here we are burying the first American crusader in
Dabiq, eagerly waiting for the remainder of your armies to arrive.”

In
other words, to be “terror group number one,” instead of Al
Qaeda, ISIS must fight America on its terrain on its own terms.
The dangers of giving into ISIS’s baiting of our emotions are real
and could lead to another Operation Iraqi Freedom-style quagmire in
two countries this time, instead of just one. Should the U.S. once
again repeat the ill-conceived adventurism of Bush Jr. (which got us
into the bloody slog that created ISIS out of the secular Socialist
Baathist regime that ruled Iraq up until the US invasion) and invade
Syria and Iraq, it will play directly into the hands of the ISIS
fanatics. They are deeply entrenched and have dug into the towns they
dominate with tens of thousands of fanatical fighters. They control
an area today that is much larger than their lands in Iraq where they
were defeated back in 2007 only with 168,000 U.S surge-reinforced
troops and with the crucial help of 103,000 Sunni Anbar Awakening
fighters (who it should be stated are no longer with us, they are now
primarily with ISIS).

If
America involves itself in fighting ISIS in the vast, Britain-sized
deserts of Iraq and Syria to appease the irresponsible bloodlust of
Americans who have amnesia when it comes to the carnage of the 2003
to 2008 insurgency years, our losses will be much higher than they
were in Operation Iraqi Freedom. And such a reflexive, ham-fisted
approach toward a skilled enemy whose occupation of the empty deserts
of western Iraq and Syria does not threaten our core interests, will
necessitate far more troops than the 168,000 deployed in 2007 to
fight just in western and central Iraq. Before the 2003 war, Centcom
generals pointed out that occupying California-sized Iraq alone
necessitated 400,000 troops (at that time this calculation, which was
ignored by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, did not include Syria which
would have to be invaded as well if we want to destroy ISIS whose
headquarters are in that country).

Keeping
such a massive occupation army in two countries in perpetuity would
cost trillions of dollars and entail a constant sacrifice of lives in
an endless counter-insurgency meat-grinder. One could not of course
withdraw this massive occupation force once it was in place. As was
seen with our so-called “cutting and running” in 2011, the
determined enemy simply resurfaces when we leave. This constant war
footing would strain our troops and resources far more than it did
during the 2007 troop surge. And of course the small number of 10,000
or 20,000 troops proposed by Senator Graham would be woefully
insufficient for the task based on the example of the necessity of a
surge of 30,000 reinforcement troops to save the large army we
already had in Iraq in 2007 from defeat.

It
should also be clearly stated that, should we permanently occupy
these vast countries (and of course keep thousands of troops fighting
in Afghanistan to prevent the return of the Taliban), we would
inadvertently be involving ourselves in a centuries-old sectarian war
between Sunnis and Shiites on behalf of Assad’s criminal
Alawite-Shiite regime (which is supported by Hezbollah and Iran). It
will be recalled this is the very Assad regime that “crossed the
red line” set by Obama and used chemical and barrel bombs to
massacre civilians in 2012 (ironically, many Republicans called for
us to attack Assad back then, which would mean we would now be
fighting ISIS and
its enemy the Assad regime had we heeded their rash calls to action).
Should we go to war with ISIS we will also be supporting the
Iranian-backed Shiite regime in Iraq which has disenfranchised our
former Sunni allies, the Anbar Awakening militias, since we left.

Reflexively deploying “boots”
(i.e. men and women who will be separated from their loved ones and
be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country) to fight
and die in remote desert towns like Tal Afar may initially make some
of us feel good. It may be gratifying for many to deploy our army to
avenge the beheading of journalist James Foley and recent killings in
France (by French citizens of Muslim descent who were living in
Paris, France, not ISIS’s Middle Eastern “Caliphate”). But the
fleeting satisfaction of seeing U.S. troops re-take Fallujah, street
by deadly street, and storm the IED-laced ISIS capital of Raqqa will
last only until the flag-draped caskets once again start streaming
back in the thousands to grieving families across America. For, make
no mistake about it, as in Vietnam where we lost 58,000 Americans to
a resourceful enemy fighting on his own turf, the enemy in Iraq and
Syria has what the military calls a “vote” (i.e. they get to kill
our troops too, the killing is not one way). Just ask the legendary
Iraqi sniper Juba of Baghdad, who filmed
his gruesome kill shots of dozens of American troops, or the
Sunni insurgent mastermind Zarqawi who turned Fallujah into a charnel
pit of the sort the U.S. had not seen since the Battle of Hue in
Vietnam.

Such
an ill-conceived and open ended U.S. occupation of Iraq and
Syria, with objectives that are not clearly defined (“crushing
ISIS” is a simplistic explanation for war objectives that actually
call for involvement in a complex, centuries-long sectarian battle in
the region that involves Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia in a
proxy war) will lead to a steady blood-drip of American lives that
will quickly lose domestic support. This is what happened in the
first, more limited, war in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 which became
highly unpopular and helped make Bush the most unpopular president
since Nixon (he had a 28 percent approval rating by the end of his
second term). In 2003, Americans were prepared for a quick “Shock
and Awe” invasion, but not for the subsequent long, drawn-out,
bloody occupation that devolved into a civil war that killed tens of
thousands (with our troops caught in the middle) and two separate
anti-American insurgencies.

Obama himself eloquently summed
up the rationale of not re-occupying Iraq recently at the G-20
Conference in Antalya, Turkey. There he resisted the urge to act
rashly and gain political points by responding militarily in the
Middle Eastern deserts to the tragedy in the streets of Paris.
Instead, he laid out his rationale for returning to the more cautious
policies of George Bush Sr. (who wisely resisted the urge to occupy
Iraq after the repulse of Hussein from Kuwait in 1991). Said
Obama:

There have
been a few who suggested that we should put large numbers of U.S.
troops on the ground.…that would be a mistake -- not because our
military could not march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and
temporarily clear out ISIL, but because we would see a repetition of
what we’ve seen before, which is, if you do not have local
populations that are committed to inclusive governance and who are
pushing back against ideological extremes, that they resurface --
unless we’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these
countries.

And let’s
assume that we were to send 50,000 troops into Syria. What happens
when there’s a terrorist attack generated from Yemen? Do we then
send more troops into there? Or Libya, perhaps? Or if there’s a
terrorist network that’s operating anywhere else -- in North
Africa, or in Southeast Asia?

Obama’s
cautiousness was echoed by former CIA head and Secretary of Defense
under Bush, Robert Gates (who it will be recalled led the surge that
saved Iraq in 2007). It was Gates who told
graduates at West Point
“In my opinion,
any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send
a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa
should have his head examined.”

As the experienced Gates implied,
a return to America’s pre-Bush Jr. policy of restraint in the
Middle East, instead of anomalous and self-defeating aggression,
serves the interest of America which has no core interests in the
barren deserts of western Iraq or eastern Syria (Iraq’s oil lies in
Kurdistan which Obama protected with bombings in August 2014 and in
the Shiite south. Syria has very little oil production by comparison
and its strategic western coast and capital are in the hands of the
government). Even President Ronald Reagan had the wisdom to withdraw
from Lebanon (a country where we similarly did not have vital stakes
despite the rise of Iranian-backed Hezbollah there) after the loss of
299 Marines in a Hezbollah terror bombing of our barracks in 1983.

It can be argued that rashly
sending our troops to fight in what is essentially a centuries old
civil war in Iraq and Syria is more about expressing our new
obsession with militarism and embrace of military options as the
primary response to all foreign challenges than a sound strategic
response to sleeper cells in places like Paris. In his recent book
The New American
Militarism. How America has Become Seduced by War,
Vietnam veteran and historian Andrew Bacevich writes: “Today, as
never before in their history Americans are enthralled with military
power…. To state the matter bluntly, Americans in our own time have
fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view
of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure
of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the
efficacy of force.”

Bacevich’s point is aptly
illustrated by the fact that, despite the recent horrors stemming
from the unpopular war in Iraq, a recent
poll shows that 62 percent of Americans favor sending troops back
to the Middle East to fight what is essentially the same foe that
killed 4,500 troops and almost defeated us from 2003 to 2007. The
reality is that the successful overthrow of the brittle regimes in
Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003 seems to have, as Bacevich
suggests, led us to have outsized expectations about how we can
reshape foreign societies with tanks and bluntly deal with sleeper
cell terror threats via purely military means. But, as the loss of
thousands of American lives in an inconclusive war in Iraq from 2003
to 2011 shows, there is only so much that “boots on the ground”
can achieve in distant places like the sectarian-riven deserts of the
Middle East. To reoccupy Iraq and also invade Syria in the name of
fighting the terroristic manifestation of Sunni extremism known as
ISIS would be a strategic blunder on the scale of Operation Iraqi
Freedom and would have similarly unknown ripple effects that could
once again lead to greater fanaticism. This last point was eloquently
made by Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul, who said, “I
think the last war in Iraq actually made it more chaotic and made us
less safe”.

A cautious policy of containing
the ISIS group in their remote desert fastness via a persistent air
campaign known as Operation Inherent Resolve and assisting local
forces in methodically pushing them back (as has successfully been
done recently at Kobane, Tel Abyad, Sinjar, Hasaka and Tikrit) is not
only strategically sound, but saves American lives.

For
a history of how the Bush invasion of Iraq created ISIS see this
HNN article by Professor Williams.